Tracking militarists’ efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy

Robert P. George

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Robert P. George is a conservative Catholic activist and academic who was once dubbed "this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker." Likened by one reporter as his generation's Richard John Neuhaus, George has played a leading role in crafting right-wing messaging on social issues and in uniting conservative Catholics and evangelicals into a cohesive political movement on the Christian Right.[1]

George endeavors to frame his arguments on behalf of socially conservative positions in secular rather than religious terms, calling it "natural law." He has argued, for example, that a human fetus is a "complete, self-integrating organism," and thus that abortion and embryonic stem cell research should be considered infanticide.[2]

He stridently opposes same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and heterosexual sodomy, arguing that "Male and female complementarity allows them to unite 'organically' as 'a single procreative principle,'" according to a New York Times review of his 2013 book Conscience and Its Enemies. "Whether they actually procreate or not," the reviewer explained, George argues that "men and women are engaging in 'one flesh unity'" in their marital relations. (The reviewer countered that George's "reasoning about the nature of marriage … is so far removed from most people’s lived experience that it will be inconsistent with their intuitions about the human good.")[3]

George insists that religious principles should be used primarily to inform the politics of "moral issues" rather than "matters of public policy upon which Gospel principles by themselves do not resolve differences of opinion." In a 2009 profile of George, reporter David Kirkpatrick observed that "In practice, George and his allies have usually found the rules of sexuality quite absolute, while the church’s teachings about social justice come out more contingent. That may be why he is almost uniformly popular among evangelicals but controversial among many of his fellow Catholics, particularly those who prefer the church's peace-and-justice liberalism to its conservative bioethics."[4]

Although the bulk of George's work concerns "moral issues," he occasionally weighs in on national security. Notably, George supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, arguing in late 2002 that even a preemptive war of aggression could be considered just if it were "motivated by a reasonable belief that a proven aggressor is in the process of equipping himself with the military means to carry out further aggression with impunity.” He added that “Few people doubt that Saddam is seeking to enhance his chemical and biological arsenal, and (even more ominously) to acquire nuclear weapons." George concluded by arguing that once diplomatic avenues were exhausted, war became not only morally permissible but mandatory. "Sometimes statesmen cannot fulfill their moral duties to prevent aggression and resist tyranny relying exclusively on diplomatic or other non-military means. In these circumstances—though, to be sure, only then—just war theory supposes that the decision to fight is not merely optional; it is morally required."[5]

On his blog at First Things, published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, George occasionally weighs in on other more strictly political matters—criticizing the Obama administration, for example, for its account of the 2012 Benghazi attack that resulted in the deaths of four U.S. diplomatic personnel in Libya,[6] as well as for having "a dangerously inflated view of the proper role of government and very little understanding of business."[7]

George has occasionally broken with other conservative pundits, notably with respect to the use of armed drones overseas. While he doesn't consider the use of drones to be "inherently immoral in otherwise justifiable military operations," George wrote in 2012 that “having a valid military target is in itself not a sufficient justification for the use of weapons such as predator drones. Sometimes considerations of justice to noncombatants forbid their use, even if that means that grave risks must be endured by our own forces in the prosecution of a war. The wholesale and indiscriminate use of drones cannot be justified, and should be criticized."[8]

Professional and Institutional Track Record

George is based at Princeton University, where he serves as a law professor and as the founding director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

In a 2006 report for the Nation, Max Blumenthal likened the Madison Program to conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. According to Blumenthal, the program—which is funded largely by conservative foundations and does not depend on Princeton for its finances—hosts "a collection of visiting fellows rife with academic neophytes and unknowns, many of whom have also been fellows of foundations like Olin and Bradley." Discussions hosted by the center have posited that a Supreme Court ruling striking down anti-sodomy laws in the United States was "the worst Supreme Court decision in history," and panel guests at various events have included white nationalist Peter Brimelow and controversial neoconservative hawk Frank Gaffney, among others.[9]

George has served on a number of government advisory committees, including Bill Clinton's Commission on Civil Rights, George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, and most recently on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom—accepting a 2013 congressional appointment to chair the latter commission[12] despite having accused the Obama administration of waging a "massive assault on religious liberty" in the United States with its socially liberal policies.[13] Karl Rove has credited George with turning the Bush administration against embryonic stem cell research.[14]

Reflecting his influence on Christian churches in the United States, George has also been credited as the lead drafter of the Manhattan Declaration, a 2009 manifesto that "promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage," according to David Kirkpatrick in the New York Times Magazine. The declaration was signed by numerous Catholic, Orthodox, and evangelical leaders in the United States, including several Catholic bishops.[15]

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